Lucca

• We went because someone at work had told me how you could bike on the medieval walls.  We went to Easter mass at the cathedral, the kids having eaten too much Easter basket candy (including Oreos, which, yes, you can find in Viterbo) for breakfast, but at least enough sugar to numb them a bit as we sat in the cold stone cathedral of Lucca, we adults determined to get to Easter mass.  It was so crowded that I sat on the floor, in truth, waiting for it to be over.  I don't like when I feel this way about church, waiting for it to be over.  And I imagine our kids don't either.  But we got there, and though I don't want our kids to have this feeling of enduring mass and getting through it, I'm still glad that we went.  And maybe the masses at big cathedrals make them appreciate more Sacra Famiglia and Brandeis chapel.  Well, not really maybe: they tell us that they prefer the smaller churches.
• Pan di Strada.  Our favorite sandwich shop.  Some of us got three meals in two days from here.
• The bike ride on the walls.  Fun, beautiful, bright.  A lucky Easter ride.  
• A small yard at the air b and b we rented.  Touch football with a nerf football from Tiger.  The kids' excitement over having a yard...
• Pasquetta is the holiday the day after Easter (Pasqua).  Italians go out and have picnics.  (Also, they have a saying about Christmas and Easter: Christmas with your family/relatives; Easter with whomever you want.)  We walked an hour along an aqueduct from our place to Lucca.  We got our Pan di Strada sandwiches and pizza and sat on the grass beyond the walls.  Afterwards, Daniel and the big kids got on a train for an afternoon excursion to nearby villages.  The little kids and I walked back along the aqueduct.  Both Con and Han had been a bit grumpy, not wanting to go on another excursion but wanting everyone to come back to our house to play for the rest of the day.  However, they weren't getting what they wanted since the big kids were heading out with Daniel.  But then the most interesting thing happened: Con and Han and I left, walked through the train station with them gloomy and down, walked about one hundred yards, and then they both began to talk and talk and talk.  No gloom, no regret, no grouchy.  They talked the entire hour walk back to our house.  And when we got back, we lay on the couch and read, played Boggle, picked up the rooms while listening to music, snacked on Pringles and cheese and chocolate and peanuts for dinner, had a dance party, which was actually Connor lying on the couch and Hannah and I dancing in the small living room, dancing dancing, making me think of our kitchen in Waltham and how we dance in the kitchen, usually after dinner, during clean-up, the radio going on the counter.  
• When I think of Lucca, I think of green.  Green is the prevalent image -- from the walls, from the road outside the walls, along the aqueduct, in the yard, on the drive.